Spelling

Everyone knows Apple is popular in China -- so popular that people riot outside Apple's stores, or set up fake stores, or just crank out fake iPhones. On a recent trip to an electronics bazaar in Shanghai, we spotted a few of the most blatant of these knockoffs. Amusingly, the phones on display didn't look anything like actual iPhones -- instead, the manufacturers concentrated their piracy efforts on attempting to replicate the spelling of the names of popular devices and brands.

April 19, 2014 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

It seems strange to recall that just a few years ago, the scripted drama was on a death watch. Threatened by premium cable, falling ratings, reality television and the omnipotent menace of "the Internet," the hourlong nighttime drama seemed on the way of the variety show. Now, of course, everyone with a network is seeking to rebrand itself with some highly produced historical drama or another. "Salem," which debuts Sunday, is Tribune-owned WGN America's maiden voyage into the roiling waters of scripted drama.

Re "A 'C' Change in Spelling Sought for the Koreas" (Sept. 15), about changing "Korea" to "Corea": The irony gods must be dying from laughter. South Korea and North Korea can get together peacefully to talk about spelling yet can't do the same when the topics actually get imperative -- topics like, oh, I don't know, the nuclear-warhead situation in North Korea. Well, if the talks for the spelling change do succeed and the talks for the nuke situation don't, causing a nuke to destroy the world, at least we will all die with good spelling consciences.

As the premiere date of "True Tori" draws closer, Tori Spelling's public humiliation surrounding her marital problems continues to come out in dribs and drabs courtesy of Lifetime television. "I got a call from my publicist and she said, 'I just want to tell you something,'" Spelling, 40, says in a new clip out Wednesday (via E! News). "'It's a girl, and she's claiming that she had an affair with Dean in Toronto when he was there. The girl has come forward. She's put her name to the story.

As an educator, I was pleased to read the letter from Dr. Stephen J. Wilson in the Times Valley Edition of March 28. He is to be commended for his strong interest in the education of young children. Because his strong concern about the teaching of "invented spelling" may reflect the concerns of many parents, it is an appropriate subject to examine. But I say "No! No! No! Teachers do not teach invented spelling. However they do recognize that children learn to write by inventing their own spelling."

Less than a week before the May 29 article on problems with teaching children spelling in California schools appeared, I was in the principal's office of my daughter's school expressing my concerns on this same issue. My daughter attends a good school and has had wonderful teachers, but I fear she will never learn to spell. Spelling errors in her tests and written work have almost never been corrected in her five years in school. Clearly, children cannot learn to do anything properly without feedback on their errors.

Crossword puzzles, hangman and other word games are great fun--and helpful ways to practice spelling skills, build vocabulary and improve your powers of deductive reasoning. Since English words aren't always spelled the way they sound, activities that give you practice in visualizing how words are spelled correctly can also help you increase your verbal proficiency.

By correctly spelling "dilapidated," 13-year-old Lise Pham became the Garden Grove Unified School District's top speller and advances to the county competition in April. Lise, an eighth-grader at McGarvin Intermediate School in Westminster, placed ninth in the same competition last year and this year beat out 6,800 other students in her ascent to the top speller position.

Re "There's never a last word on spelling," Opinion, May 27 Inflexible wordsmiths neglect to take into account that the English language is constantly evolving and changing with the times. It is archaic that words such as "night" and "light" are still spelled as they were when they were pronounced with no silent letters. English of the 1950s and 1960s is somewhat different from newly evolving language of today. The language of teens eludes many older people, even though much of it will become commonplace and proper.

Sarah Lee of Woodbury School and Kathy Oeung of Morningside School had correctly spelled peculiarity, susceptible and quarantine. They had beaten out 39 other champion spellers by correctly spelling inchoate, accelerate and gratuity.

SHREVEPORT, La. - A woodsy stretch of Willow Lake Farm, just outside this city, has been painstakingly built to look like a 17 t h century New England village, filled with shops and houses with steep-pitched roofs and drab clapboard exteriors. Milling about nearby are women in elaborate capes and cinched dresses, and men clad in peasant shirts and heavy coats. It's all textbook quaint - until you see the towering gallows at the center of town. This is the setting for "Salem," the new TV series from Tribune Co.'s WGN America set in the Massachusetts village that was the scene of notorious Colonial witch trials.

Coming off the success of the groundbreaking horror movie "The Exorcist" and the Academy Award-winning cop thriller "The French Connection," director William Friedkin seemed to have the magic touch in the 1970s - until he made "Sorcerer. " Adapted from the the 1950 Georges Arnaud novel "Le Salaire de la peur" ("The Wages of Fear") and inspired by the 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot film of that name, "Sorcerer" is a taut thriller about four outcasts transporting truckloads of high explosives over treacherous South American terrain.

LAS VEGAS - Telling friends that you're heading to Las Vegas for some Shakespeare is a bit like claiming you read Playboy for the interviews. Well, I did indeed head to Vegas last weekend to see "The Tempest," and I can guarantee that I was the only person on my morning flight reading Harold C. Goddard's classic "The Meaning of Shakespeare. " Just a few pages from the chapter on "The Tempest," mind you. The guys downing pre-lunch wine and cocktails around me were whooping it up "Hangover"-style.

If you haven't made it to "Bad Words," Jason Bateman's directing debut and sarcastic takedown of the spelling bee game, it's just become much easier to indulge in this guilty pleasure. Like Bateman's 40-year-old Guy with a grudge and unbeatable spelling chops, the movie is turning up everywhere now. The competitive spelling world, teeming with bright kids, obsessive parents and rigid educators, proves to be rich terrain for a caustic, clever comedy. The actor-director puts himself in good funny company too - Kathryn Hahn and Allison Janney among others.

An Arcadia sixth-grader won the Los Angeles County Office of Education Spelling Bee this week in just over an hour with the word "thrombosis. " Kai Morita, a First Avenue Middle School student, beat out 24 other contestants in fourth through sixth grade at the Almansor Court Conference Center in Alhambra on Wednesday evening. First Avenue Middle is part of the Arcadia Unified School District. In second place was Daniel Ozaraga, a sixth-grader at Santa Fe Elementary School in the Baldwin Park Unified School District.

Sarcastic, sanctimonious, salacious, sly, slight and surprisingly sweet, the black comedy of "Bad Words," starring and directed by Jason Bateman, is high-minded, foul-mouthed good nonsense. I had wondered where Bateman's angry itch would take him next. The script, by Andrew Dodge, his first to be produced after many years in the studio trenches, is a good match of man and material. As an actor - whether a victim trying to even the score with Melissa McCarthy in "Identity Thief" or the ruthless top firing dog in "Up in the Air" - Bateman always brings an edge to his work.

Wendy Guey of West Palm Beach, Fla., a four-time contender, won the 69th National Spelling Bee and the $5,000 first prize Thursday by spelling "vivisepulture" correctly. She defeated Nikki Dowdy of Houston, who missed "cervicorn." It was an all-girl final when the elimination got down to three spellers. "I really wanted to win and I prayed a lot," Wendy said. "I was just really lucky that I got all the words I knew." What will she do with her prize money? "Spend it," Wendy said.

The father of five home-schooled children with a knack for doing well in spelling bees was accused of abusing them when they lost. Thomas Lavery, 56, was indicted in Akron on eight felony counts and one misdemeanor count of endangering children. Marjory Lavery, now 18, told police that in 1995 family members had to physically restrain Lavery after she came in second in a national bee.

Legendary -- "very famous or well-known" -- How a Jackson County Spelling Bee coordinator two weeks ago described running out of words to give to seventh-grader Kush Sharma and fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman in Kansas City, Mo. The pair survived 66 rounds before the list of words was exhausted. Slobber -- " to let saliva or liquid flow from your mouth " -- One of the words spelled Saturday when the pair reconnected for another 29 rounds. Boodle -- " a collection or lot of persons " -- What the Helzberg Auditorium at the Kansas City Central Library saw Saturday, forcing organizers to set up a television outside, allowing more people to see the duel.

A potent storm gave Southern California a more thorough soaking on Friday than it has seen in more than three years, bringing both cheers in a drought-stricken state and anxiety as it sent mud billowing through hillside neighborhoods and clogged roads. Downtown Los Angeles saw more rain by Friday afternoon - 1.7 inches - than it had seen during the entire rest of the "rain year," starting last July. For some, it was a harrowing day - for two drivers who were rescued after getting trapped by a rock slide near Malibu; for two men rescued from a downed tree in the suddenly roiling Los Angeles River; for hundreds who lost electricity when a power pole toppled over near a Long Beach police station.